Bureau d'Espoir would like to invite you to participate in THE HOPE SESSIONS, organized from Thursday, 29th of August until Sunday, 1st of September.THE HOPE SESSIONS is an interview project that will result in a movie that will be shown during the Bureau d'Espoir exhibition in ZSenne in December 2013.Set-up: During 72 hours Veridiana Zurita and Elke Van Campenhout will conduct one-on-one interviews about 'contemporary' hope. We ask each interviewee to come with a Hope Object, an object they consider hopeful. F.e. an object that produces hope when handled, an object that is a reminder of hope, an object that brings out the potential of the current moment, …. With a cup of tea or a little something stronger, we talk through the days and nights, mapping out hope in all its forms. Every session takes about 2 hours: an hour of talking and then an hour of constructing the collective image of hope. If you are willing to take part, please fill in your slot in the doodle, and don't forget to bring a Hope Object. We are looking forward to work with you. http://www.doodle.com/gkaqu59edh2zsihc

THE HOPE SESSIONS is run by Elke Van Campenhout, Veridiana Zurita and Marcelo Mardones, and is part of the work of Bureau d'Espoir, a long-term collective research project initiated by Elke Van Campenhout. Bureau d'Espoir will share the durational performance project Battery and the Natural History Museum of Hope during 22 days in ZSenne, december 2013.

Bureau d'Espoir is supported by a.pass, de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, ZSenne and VGC.

Artists:

Helena Dietrich is an artist from Munich, Germany, currently doing a postgraduate research project in a.pass (Advanced performance and scenography studies) in Brussels. In her two week residency in ZSenne she works and experiments for her a.pass project: "LILI – a tool for relating" deals with construction of the self and methods to relate differently to the self, to establish through that a different approach to collectivity. In her work she experiments with tools from various contexts to challenge our relations to self and its ideologies.

David Chavez is currently living in Brussels and Mexico, a psychic intuitive healer, sexual healer and artist. He offers Tantra, individual channeling, spiritual coaching sessions and teaches at Tantric and energy healing workshops in Europe and in Mexico. As a self taught artist his plastic expression is mainly through painting and drawings with a variety of means. Healing meets art as he uses chanting to tune in with his inner and multidimensional self, leaving the mind to witness the process and supporting the technical part of his creations.

Voin de Voin is a Bulgarian artist currently living and working in Berlin since 2008. Sariev Gallery in Plovdiv, Bulgaria represents him. He studied art at the Rietveld Academy and did advanced research in performance at the DasArts Institute in Amsterdam. In his work he combines performance, installation and social experiments.

His aim is to create new connections between the private and the collective, establish new systems of thinking and offer unique experiences to his audience by creating environments where the borders between performer and public are merged. Recently he started creating his own curating platform, covering political, sexual and experimental art intersections.

His work has been shown in various festivals and places like Nylo living art museum (Iceland), Museum Quartier (Vienna), Tanya Leighton gallery (Berlin), Moma (New York), Istanbul Contemporary, Documenta 13 and others.

Veridiana Zuritaworks with performance, video and text. The formats of her work don't really matter since they are consequences of her practice and not a given rule. She mainly starts with a personal question, a worry or an urgency. A need to experiment the relations between self and the other, its roles and phantasmagorias.

We’ll provide you with our services. From the moment you enter in the space the transformation that you will allow can take place. We’ll carry you away and bring you “home, healed”. Healing is a process of confrontation. Our help is a dedication. And fake reinvents your reality.It lies in the preceding expectations of the beholder what is perceived as real and what as fake. The problem is not to perceive real as real and fake as fake but to apply to them a hierarchical positioning. Something can only be really real by the existence of its fake counterpart. By understanding and experiencing opposites as multiple perspectives instead of a dualistic stubbornness we can detach ourselves from limiting concepts and access the full spectrum of creation.

Helena Dietrich is an artist from Munich, Germany, currently doing a postgraduate research project in a.pass (Advanced performance and scenography studies) in Brussels. In her two week residency in ZSenne she works and experiments for her a.pass project: "LILI – a tool for relating" deals with construction of the self and methods to relate differently to the self, to establish through that a different approach to collectivity. In her work she experiments with tools from various contexts to challenge our relations to self and its ideologies.

For her presentation in ZSenne she invites three guest-performers: David Chavez, Voin de Voin and Veridiana Zurita. Together they will create a magical help-center and service you.In the space there will be several boxes, where the visitors can enter and experience the so called Lilification.

During his first residency at ZSenne in August 2012, Christoph Ragg worked on the installation project In Between the Mirror. This project was concerned with different ways of 'looking at yourself', 'looking at the room around you' and examining the potential 'stories' that emerged from this.In May, Christoph would like to develop his work on storytelling further. Using a "listening chair", visitors can listen to interviews with people from the Anneessens district. The subjects spoken about will include history, social issues, culture and the future.

(for the interviews Christoph Ragg works with BNA BBOT which provided most of the interviews including the montage).This project was realized with the support of and thanks to:ZSenne, BNA-BBOT, a.pass, A Two Dogs Company, Christophe Meierhans, all interview partners, and ... .

As this is an ongoing project (work in progress) ZSenne gallery would like to invite you to a first listening experience on:

vernissage:

Thursday 30th of May between 18h00 and 21h00

As special guests for this show moment Christoph Ragg is happy to invite the small experimental online-label surfacenoise by Peter Lenaerts for a pre-release of David Helbich's collection of early soundpieces, containing a series of wildly cut fieldrecordings resulting in a hyper realistic close-reading of the sound material. Totally nerdy and very punk!

After the vernissage the "listening chair" will be available to visit on:

Friday 31st of March Saturday 1st of June

between 16h00 and 19h00.

please feel all welcome to pass bye, have a drink and enjoy the sounds

Lilia Mestre (Lisbon, 1968) is a Portuguese performing artist living and working in Brussels. In her work she uses choreographic tools to research issues related to perception, culture and relationality. Since 1994 she has worked as a dancer and collaborator namely with Vera Mantero, Hans Van den Broeck, Christine de Smedt, Martin Nachbar, Kate Machintosh and Mette Edvardsen. In 1999 she founded the company Random Scream with Davis Freeman to expose the eclectic elements of everyday culture with proposed lines of flight for dance, theatre, and other media. Her own work includes the stage performances: “Untitle me”, Missing Link, Beyond Mary and Joseph, Rendering, (g)hosts and Moving you. She also created a site specific research series Interface fictions questioning performance, product and the gaze in public space and the performative site specific installation Live-In Room issued from a research on sound and emotions. Her next project Ai! an interjection - as relational form is a choreographic collaboration with Marcos Simões. Since 2006 Lilia Mestre is dramaturge and co-ordinator for Bains Connective Art Laboratory in Brussels. Currently she is mentor at a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies in Antwerp).

Marcos Simoes (Portugal, 1975) lives in Brussels. He studied civil engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon. He attended the intensive course of SNDO and the contemporary dance programme at the University Miguel Hernandez in Altea, Spain. He created and performed three pieces in collaboration with Sara Manente: Palyndrome, Eye in the Sky and Instructions. He completed the post-master a.p.t/A.pass in Performing Arts in Antwerp where he presented several works around his concept: The LaughingBody. He created Eskimo presented in Monty (Antwerpen) and Working Title Platform (Brussels). He is currently working as an interpreter for Sara Manente, and in two different collaboration projects, Ai! with the Portuguese choreographic artist Lilia Mestre and the other with the visual artist Marcelo Mardones. He’s one of the founding members of the association CABRA vzw (http://cabra.weebly.com/).